The Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a civil rights law firm have filed a joint complaint against the city of Lomita for denying the Islamic Center of South Bay's application to build a new mosque.‬ ‪The federal complaint, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles, contends that the city is discriminating against the center and that there is no evidence to back up neighbors' concerns about...

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a public investigation into whether the city of Lomita discriminated against a religious institution when its council denied an application from the Muslim community to expand the Islamic Center of South Bay. Lomita City Atty. Christi Hogin said federal investigators interviewed 13 people this week involved with the city's decision after launching an initial inquiry in June. She said that there is not "any evidence at all" of anti-Muslim sentiments in Lomita.

The most important holiday of the Muslim calendar got off to a violent start in Afghanistan on Sunday when suspected insurgents staged a bombing outside a mosque in the north, killing at least seven worshipers and injuring more than a dozen other people, Afghan officials said. The attack in Baghlan province, which came on the first day of the three-day Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, was condemned by Afghan officials as un-Islamic. Gen. John Allen, the U.S. Marine who commands all Western forces in the country, called the bombing "despicable.

At a conference two years ago, I sat in on a meeting between U.S. officials and young Islamist politicians from Tunisia, Jordan and other countries in the Middle East. The Islamists wanted to know: Would the Americans allow them to run in free elections, even if it meant they might come to power? The Americans turned the question back at them: Would the Islamists, if they won, allow free and democratic elections, even if it might mean losing power? At the time, it was mostly a theoretical discussion — but now those questions have become very real.

Jewish extremists are suspected of torching a mosque in a northern Israeli town Monday, the latest in a string of anti-Arab attacks that have enraged Palestinians and alarmed Israeli security officials. After setting the fire in the early-morning hours, vandals spray-painted the words "revenge" and "price tag" on the walls of the mosque in the Bedouin village of Tuba-Zangaria. Similar messages have been left in the West Bank, where attackers have burned mosques, cars belonging to Palestinians and olive trees.

A car bomb exploded Friday near a mosque in southern Iraq as mourners gathered for the funeral of a tribal sheik, killing at least 17 people and wounding 70, Iraqi officials said. The blast took place at 5 p.m. in a town outside Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, as the mourners gathered in a hall near the mosque. The explosion set cars ablaze and damaged several nearby buildings. Many local officials, including the chief of provincial council, his deputy and some judges, were at the ceremony but were not among the dead or injured.

At least 28 worshipers, including a member of parliament, were killed Sunday by a suicide bomber who blew himself up inside Baghdad's largest Sunni mosque, violence that harked back to the sectarian warfare in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on the Umm al Qura mosque. Sheik Abdul Ghafour Samaraie, head of the Sunni Endowment, which oversees Sunni mosques and is headquartered at Umm al Qura, said he believed the Iraqi affiliate of Al Qaeda was behind the bombing, even though the terrorist group is dominated by Sunni Arabs.

August 20, 2011 | By Alex Rodriguez and Zulfiqar Ali, Los Angeles Times

A suicide bomber at a mosque jammed with worshipers killed at least 40 people and injured 100 Friday in Pakistan's restive tribal region along the Afghan border, one of the deadliest attacks in recent weeks in the country. At least 400 people were in the mosque near the town of Jamrud in the Khyber tribal district when the bomber walked in and detonated his explosives, police and witnesses said. Khyber, the gateway to Afghanistan for NATO supply trucks, remains a stronghold for Taliban militants fighting the U.S.-allied Pakistani government.

Tanks and troops stormed the eastern city of Dair Alzour early Sunday, launching yet another assault on enclaves in open revolt against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. According to accounts compiled by the activist network Local Coordinating Committees of Syria, the military entered nearly every single district of the Euphrates River city, which lies close to the Iraqi border. In video footage posted to the Internet, gunfire and explosions could be heard as mosques summoned the faithful to dawn prayers.

August 1, 2011 | By Borzou Daragahi and Alexandra Sandels, Los Angeles Times

The months-long standoff between Syria's embattled government and a broad-based opposition movement escalated dramatically when security forces launched simultaneous military attacks in several major cities, instilling anger and fear in an already battered populace just ahead of the emotionally charged month of Ramadan. Security forces opened fire with tanks and machine guns on opposition hot spots across the nation Sunday, including areas near the southern city of Dara, where the uprising began 4 1/2 months ago, and in the far eastern city of Dair Alzour.